


you knock me out, I fall apart.

by moonsandstar_s



Category: RWBY
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 12:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9322769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsandstar_s/pseuds/moonsandstar_s
Summary: He's known by many names, most of them less than complimentary: betrayer of the tribe, ally to the wind, the bastard from Sanus. Ozpin's known by many more: headmaster, trickster, Huntsman, mastermind. Neither of those names really encompass who they are around those they care for. And who are they around each other?That remains to be seen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> inspired from me seeing qrowpin fanart at 1 in the morning and promptly getting my ass out of bed to write fic for these two because they give me a lot of feelings i can't handle.  
> things i learned: qrow is still easy for me to write. ozpin? not so much. 
> 
> takes place between 3x3 and 3x6. 
> 
> title from 'it's quiet uptown', hamilton.

Ozpin found him sitting in the back of a dingy bar.

It was one of the lesser-known ones on the back allies, near the docks, not frequently populated and even less frequently cleaned— the windows were thick with grime that testified to its age, grime that was probably older than Ozpin himself was, a hard feat to accomplish— and it was called the Crow Bar. There was something to be said for one of the remaining members of a broken team; Qrow was definitely a fan of irony, perhaps even more so than alcohol, and it showed in little ways like these.   

During the night, there was a crowd of people clustering around the front of the bar, clamoring for more liquor. Warm gold and white lights danced across the ceiling and a barman poured a rope of gleaming amber liquid from a bottle with a narrow neck, droplets splashing over the sides of the shot-glass as he skimmed it down the bar. A television, one of the only things that was new in this place, flashed an old picture-film about a Huntsmen’s journey. As Ozpin looked over, the camera angle showed the Huntsmen bleeding out on the ground, a bloodstain slowly spreading across where his heart was.

He moved away from the main crowd and located who he was looking for in the back, slumped over in a booth. Qrow was unshaven, hair hanging in his eyes, a half-empty glass full of whiskey mixed with melting ice-cubes clutched in his hand.

"Qrow." Ozpin leaned forward on his cane, eyes narrowing. “ _Qrow,"_ he said more sharply as the Huntsman gave every appearance intoxicated of stupor, not looking up from his slumped position. "You’re drunk.”

“And you’re a nag, Captain Obvious,” Qrow mumbled, indicating that he was conscious after all. He was slurring his words heavily; not good. A heavy cloud of misery hung around him. There were a lot of types of drunk people— the loud, the giggly, the aggressive, the sorrowful. With the amount of blame Qrow placed squarely on his shoulders… it was no wonder he was the latter. He made an effort to sit up regardless, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “I'm in a bar. Of course I'm drunk. I'm not here for a nice little game of tiddly-winks, I'm here for what a bar's for. But what are you doing here, Oz?”

Not replying immediately, Ozpin sat down across from him, his elbow knocking a salt-shaker off the table. It fell to the floor with a crack, and Qrow’s scowl deepened as he noticed it.

“See? Goddamn semblance... can’t even have the dear old headmaster sitting down without a screwed-up error…”

“Your semblance is not something you can control. If you cannot wield control over it, there’s no reason to blame yourself for it. Nor grieve over it.”

“It’s not that easy.” Qrow looked away, his mouth working. Seeing Ozpin seemed to have knocked an ounce of sobriety back into him. “You should go.”

“Why?” Ozpin was amused. “Does this not seem like my type of background?”

“I’m used to seeing you in your office or the courtyards, if that’s what you mean,” Qrow said, sitting back and folding his arms over his chest, every bit the picture of an insolent, sullen Huntsmen who was drunk up to his ears. “But… no, not here. You don’t belong here.”

“Does any human have true claim to belonging to any one certain place?”

Qrow’s eyebrows slanted down in anger. “Stop it with the double-meanings and tricks. I’m not a school-boy anymore and you’d do well to remember it.” He knocked back the rest of his drink, eyes going to blazing red slits. “And don’t play your riddles with me. I don’t think you _get_ it.”

“I understand plenty.” Ozpin’s voice went cold, colder than winter itself, dripping icicles with jagged edges. He leaned forward, staring Qrow down over his spectacles. “Do you truly believe that coming here in an effort to drown your memories will do anyone any good? Your nieces? The one team member you really have left?”    

A tense muscle jumped in Qrow’s jaw. “I’m not here to forget anything.”

“And yet,” Ozpin replied, “you are just as recalcitrant and a terrible a liar as you were when you entered Beacon.”

“Stop it. I don’t want to talk about my schooldays.” Qrow’s eyes were dark with anger and guilt. “There are things better left in the _past.”_

“And what might those be?” Ozpin’s voice hardened, anger flickering in his chest like a low flame at Qrow’s negligence, his inconsolable sorrow and unwillingness to help himself. “Your memories? Your _team?_ You cannot forget the past. Our pasts form who we are. We mustn’t forget them, only learn from them. And _you,_ most of all—”

Qrow struck, his hand flashing across the table as he grabbed Ozpin’s wrist and slammed it into the tabletop, leaning forward and shoving his face right up to Ozpin, eyes burning.

“My semblance may be misfortune, but don’t think you fool me for a single instant, _Oz_.” Qrow’s voice was low and hissing, his fingers digging into Ozpin’s wrist. “I’m no idiot, and you’d do well to remember it. You’re not here because you care. And you’re not here to lecture me. I’m not your pawn.”

It wasn’t easy to forget Qrow was Raven’s brother, but the resemblance was never as striking as it was on this shadowy, stormy night, with his red eyes blazing and his mouth set in a snarl. He was just the echo of the boy Ozpin had met years ago, years and years back, but he had changed in every way that mattered and none of the ways that didn’t.

“No,” Ozpin said quietly, unmoving, though his circulation had begun to falter with the pressure of Qrow’s grip on his wrist. “I am not nearly foolish enough to suppose that.”

Qrow let go roughly, shoving him back. “Then _why_ are you here?” His voice cracked, exposing the dark and writhing anguish underneath the facade of cold disregard. “My semblance doesn’t just magically go away when I wish it to, Oz. You know that. I’m here, and if something terrible happens, I don’t care about _them—_ ” He jerked his head towards the boisterous crowd that roared in the center of the bar— “but for the people I love— it will affect them. I _do_ care about that. You aren’t exempt from it because your soul is old as semblances themselves.”

Ozpin recoiled, his teeth clenching together. “Isolating yourself only hurts others, and yourself, much more than it helps them. And I, more than anyone, am more than capable of handling misfortune,” he said, the faintest shadow of bitterness souring his tone. “Believe me. I am well acquitted for it.”

“I know you are.” Qrow laughed harshly. “Because you have me to deal with as well as Jimmy, right?”

“I don’t know why you’re back in Vale, Qrow.” Ozpin traced his gaze thoughtfully over the scarred tabletop between them. “Who do you belong to any longer? Why do you fight for what is right? Your sister no longer cares who wins. You have no one left to hold you here.”

“You’re wrong on that count.” Qrow’s voice was inaudibly quiet, almost lost in the throng of shouts in the bar. “I have you.”

The tension turned palpable. Ozpin looked away from the burning intensity of Qrow’s gaze. “Even then, you still owe your loyalty to two souls. In the end it can only come down to one. Me, or your blood kin, Qrow?”

“Funny.” There was no humor in his voice. “You’re the last person I would trust when it came to divided loyalties.”

Ozpin sucked in a sharp breath, rocking back in his seat. _“What?”_

“Do you think I forgot about who you are?” Qrow’s stormy eyes held his, filling his vision. “A single immortal soul, older than anyone, taking a new host when the mortal end is near? Trying to keep Remnant together, split between Vacuo and Atlas and Mistral and Vale? How many bodies have you inhabited? Do you even remember what the real truth is anymore?” Abruptly, his expression went flat and cold. “So don’t whine on about how I don’t know who I am when no one knows who _you_ are.” 

Ozpin had long since ceased to wonder why he had so many different personalities that he could shed like a snake’s skin— kind headmaster, calculating strategist, cold warrior. The years had calcified him; he could don different personalities as easily as he could take a breath… it was only when he was with Qrow that he wasn’t quite sure _who_ he was. “So you fight for what is right because of me and because of your found family, your nieces,” Ozpin breathed. “Cards on the table so soon, Qrow?”

“Do you know what I told Yang and Ruby about you, when they asked about you and I?”

“Tell me.” He leaned forward, hands clasped together, every bit the picture of calm when inside him, an inferno was raging.

“I told them we went back for many years,” Qrow snarled. “I’ve kept your secrets and hid the reality from everyone about you, everyone! God knows what it would cost us both to tell the truth!”

“And God knows what it would cost you to admit the truth to yourself.” Ozpin’s voice lost all its warmth, each syllable barbed with frost. “You are living in a lie, Qrow Branwen, and every day you do not end it, the hole inside of you will widen and widen, until it is too big for anyone to heal, let alone yourself.”

Qrow’s voice was ragged and soft when he replied, his eyes piercing as he looked up between the dark strands of his hair. “I may have helped to keep it, but I’m not the one who created this lie between both of us.”

At that, something inside of him snapped, and he had to get out of there, had to be anywhere Qrow wasn’t. Ozpin stood up wordlessly and left the bar, making his way through a knot of tumultuous drunkards near the door. 

He swept out into the night, half-blind with his own emotions, the stars swinging crazily above with the broken moon. Rain had begun to fall between the time when he had entered and exited the Crow Bar, and now it streaked down in cold droplets, hitting him on the face and curling the ends of his hair so they fell into his eyes.

The tempest of tangled emotions inside him roared, demanding acknowledgement, and he wondered briefly if being around Qrow was, for him, what alcohol was to so many others: a source of spinning, wild emotion and temporary numbness that only hurt you, in the end. He wasn't a stranger to emotion that controlled the body, but for a man who had watched ages die and fall as embers rose and fell in a fire, this was unprecedented entirely, and he felt like some part of him was withering, dying. Age could calcify one's soul, surely, but for it to expose more emotions than any one human had any right to feel... that, he could not cope with. 

  
_And for the one who has mastered the Maidens and the relics, I cannot bear this._  
  
He began to stagger down the sidewalk, each step taxing him as he drove his cane into the ground to steady himself. The street was empty, and pools of amber streetlight showed the rain getting steadily heavier, silver droplets striking the pavement with explosive force and swirling down to drainages.

“Oz!”

A shout rang out behind him and he half-turned around. A tall figure stood on the cracked pavement outside the bar, light spilling from the closing door onto his face, rain blurring the edges of his form. But Ozpin knew him, would know him anywhere.

Qrow took a few steps towards him, eyes wide in the dark night. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

He shook his head mutely, jaw held tight, his chest heaving. His hand was clenched in a white-knuckled fist around the top of his cane. It was more testament to the fact of how many people he was, all contained within one body; if anyone could see him now, standing here under the storm with Qrow, compared to the usual him he was at Beacon, they wouldn’t recognize the two as being the same person. “Why did you follow me?”

“I always follow you.” Qrow’s eyes glittered. “You should know that word and what applies to it. _Always._ You will always exist. Remnant will always have goodness in it. And I’ll always be loyal to you.”

Ozpin closed his eyes in silent acquisition, rain running down his cheeks, like tears. “I was too harsh earlier.”

“No. You were honest.” Qrow was silent for a long beat. “Not many are honest enough anymore, not with her influence everywhere, with the secrecy and shadows.”

Ozpin closed his eyes. Salem had been as much a part of his life as his own breath. When the end came— not just for his mortal body, but for Remnant himself— he would see her, face to face again. “Honesty won’t save us from Salem. Sometimes I doubt if anything will. She is a darkness that lives within all of us, and so many people choose to feed darkness rather than fight it.”

Qrow flinched, as if he had been slapped. “Choosing is hard,” he murmured. “My sister chose wrongly, but sometimes I wonder if she’s got the right idea.”

Silently, Ozpin looked up. The stars had come out one by one, forming a great silver spread, like a scattered spill of diamonds. They glittered in shades of silver and white, and he thought of the girl who looked just like her mother, the girl with the smaller soul, who possessed an extraordinary power that lay sleeping in her veins like a snake just waiting to strike. “My time is running out in this form,” he said softly, looking at his hands. You couldn’t see the age on them, but he could feel the end coming; it felt like a cord, slowly tautening and choking off his breath with each passing day until one day, it would snap entirely. “I have months left, maybe a year.”

Qrow looked stricken. “So soon?”

“They will no longer need me.” Ozpin wrapped both hands around the top of his cane. “The relic is well-guarded, and the conundrum with Amber… I have faith in the young girl, Miss Nikos. She will bear such a burden admirably. And as for your niece… these things take time. Her power will emerge when it is due.”

“Do you honestly think _that’s_ what concerns me?” Qrow frowned, his gaze glittering with something untold at Ozpin.

“You all must learn to move on,” he replied. 

He moved forward, to Ozpin’s shock, and Qrow rested his head on Ozpin’s shoulder. “I don’t know what form you’ll take in the next life and I don’t care who you once were,” he said raggedly, his hands clutching at Ozpin’s shoulderblades, and he could feel his heartbeat staggering in his chest. “I don’t care if it makes me a terrible person. I will never, never stop needing you.”

Ozpin allowed his head to tip forward, his chin brushing the top of Qrow’s head. It seemed like only yesterday he had seen him for the first time, but he knew it was years— years layered upon years that had changed the very fabric of both of their souls. “No,” he whispered, his voice soft and aching with pain. “Nor I you.”

“What am I going to do without you?” Qrow rasped softly, shuddering, the faintest suggestion of his breath tickling Ozpin’s neck.

Ozpin closed his eyes. “What you always have done.”

“Argue with James?” Qrow leaned back, eyes narrowing. There was the Qrow that Ozpin knew - the one who hid behind his wit, shielding his pain with falsities. He didn't know the Qrow that he had seen just seconds earlier, the vulnerable one, the one with something broken inside. “Or get drunk and come back here, trying to forget everything I'll never be able to?”

“No. Survive.” He met Qrow’s gaze squarely before he let out the slightest of huffs of laughter. “It seems the token of arrogance to presume you would change so soon, but— you will survive, even when I am not here to guide you. You always have. Son of the tribe, ally to the wind, Huntsmen of the Academy.”

“And bad luck charm.” Qrow’s voice was hoarse. He looked up, the rain plastered to his face, rain streaking down his skin. He looked suddenly, achingly young in the dim light. “I’ll have to go again,” he said. “Go to Mistral, or Vacuo, or anywhere away from here, so my semblance doesn’t strike at those I love. Except this time I won’t have the excuse of being away on a mission for you.”

“And you will survive it, bear your cross admirably, as you always have.” Ozpin drew his cane through the puddles forming on the dimpled and cracked pavement, the shattered moon wavering on their ripples surfaces. The cane’s wake shattered it even further, leaving undulating white pieces shimmering in the water. “Qrow, what is sought after by many, found by few, and satisfies none?”

Qrow glared at him suspiciously. “Is this a riddle?”

“No. The answer to a riddle. Do you see?”

“What is sought after by many, found by few, and satisfies none… _the answer to a riddle.”_ Qrow shook his head, scattering silver drops. He had said he hated riddles, but Ozpin knew better, knew what lay beneath his unfeeling mask. “Oz,” he whispered, tilting his head back so the moonlight shone over it, outlining the hollow of his throat, the slant of his jaw, the bristle of his chin, the glow of his eyes. “Oz, I’ll never forget this time. This life. And you better not either, even in all the lives you’ve had…”

“I will see you on the other side,” Ozpin said softly before turning, and vanishing into the dawning night, leaving Qrow behind in the pool of streetlight, in the rain, and utterly, utterly alone.

 

* * *

  
  
_; fin_


End file.
